Closing Arguments Postponed in PA Voter ID Trial

Closing arguments in the trial of Pennsylvania's voter-identification law have been postponed for a day, but the state's legal team filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley scheduled the arguments for Thursday and said he'd review the motion.

Most of Wednesday's abbreviated court session was consumed by a closed-door hearing on the plaintiffs' analysis of how many voters couldn't obtain a valid photo ID before last year's election. State officials objected to the testimony, but the judge didn't immediately rule on whether it would be admitted as evidence.

The plaintiffs' lawyers said the state's trying to distract attention from problems with the free, voting-only IDs that are supposed to be readily available to registered voters. The state's lawyers say earlier wrinkles have been ironed out.

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Pennsylvania’s controversial voter ID law has come back to trial in the Commonwealth court, and both sides are making serious plays. WITF’s capital reporter Mary Wilson says the first few days of testimony were brimming with testimony from those challenging the laws, but talk of voter fraud -- one of the issues legislators emphasized most when passing the law -- was surprisingly limited.

Court is in recess for now in the trial over the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's voter identification law. The trial is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.

Questions of numbers and statistical techniques filled the ninth day of testimony. Lawyers spent hours questioning the state's statistician, William Wecker, who offered a critique of the estimate provided in testimony last week that half a million Pennsylvania voters don't have proper voter ID on record with the commonwealth.